Android In-App Billing... 30%?

nwhitfield

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The problem is, even if there were another app store, you'd have to persuade people to go there. Amazon manages, because they're a big name, but even for setting up their store, you still have to go through the "Installing apps from somewhere else could end up with horrible evil things happening. Do you really want to accept this risk" dialog.

People will probably think "I'd bought stuff from Amazon, I know it'll be ok" but for something that - to start with especially - may have only a fairly small number of apps? Why would a new user do that? How would they even find the app store? It's a very tricky proposition, unfortunately.

I my main app, I want a way to get donations towards the cost of running the site that the app connects to; members who have donated don't get a reminder banner in the app.

I thought about using the Play Store. And then I thought about the stupid moralising of Google, and the changes to the app I'd have to do to fit their skewed view of the world. And the 30% of our donations they'd cream off. So I decided to do it differently.

I added a page to the website, with minimal formatting, that creates a form with a PayPal donate button (I wanted to avoid the library, because we have members in lots of countries, and support doesn't seem uniform). Tap the donate link, the app opens a web view, passing an identifier to the website script. That creates a form with a custom field embedded, so that the transaction can be linked to a specific user.

When a donation is made via the normal PayPal mobile web flow, the web site gets a PayPal IPN via the usual callback. That updates the user's record in the website. I then added an extra field to the data I return to the app from our API, indicating whether or not they're a recent donor, and that's used to show or hide the reminder banner.

Now, I know this isn't as slick as having a simple Google in-app payment (and perhaps consuming a donation after, say, a year), but it also means that if someone donates €10, we actually get €9.31, or for £20, we get £19.12; use in-app payments and we'd get €7 and £14 respectively.

There are lots of other ways to handle this (in some cases, the PayPal library might be a good thing to include in your app). And yes, it's not as integrated as IAP. But with a bit of thought, you can manage a fairly reasonable experience, and retain more of your cash.
 

LucaMs

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Excellent considerations; also the idea of donations seems to me the right way (in cases like yours).

But your first sentence:
"The problem is, even if there were another app store, you'd have to persuade people to go there"

Do not you think that it is like saying:
"It is useless for me to develop this app because there are already 100 of the same type"
?

Answer: If your app has something that makes it better, try to develop it.

From the point of view of developers, earn double is certainly a great advantage.

From the point of view of the customers you could groped to come up with something that will make the new site more attractive.

Also, I do not think that trying is a big financial risk.
 

nwhitfield

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Longtime User
Well, yes, to an extent. But I mean that the problem with establishing another app store, as you (perhaps jokingly) suggested Erel do is that it's a lot of work for someone to do. User's simply aren't going to visit an app store unless there is something compelling about it, not least because of the hurdles imposed by those security settings in Android.

To make an app store compelling, it needs one or more of various things, in my view:

• A big selection of apps. To build that up is a lot of work on the part of the people running the store, persuading (incentivising?) authors to use it. As Erel's said with regard to other things, Anywhere System is in the business of building IDEs. Evangelising an app store means less time spent on that

• A well known brand. Amazon has this, and has a relationship with customers. It also knows when a large proportion of its customers are using Android, so that makes it a lot easier for it to push its own app store to people who are likely to use it. A new entrant doesn't really have that.

• Competitive prices. If you take less commission, the prices can be the same as Google, and the authors get more. Or they can be lower. Punters will come to your store if things are cheaper for them. But something has to give; will the authors then get less money? And if so, how will you tempt them to join? If you have deep pockets, like Amazon, you can also do special deals, giving away an app of the day, for instance.

• A Unique Selling Point (USP). You might be able to come up with a USP that will appear to a particular demographic - for instance, a co-op app store, which makes a big point of only having ethical apps, and of paying all the tax it's supposed to, might fit well with some things.

I'm not saying that there's no point in alternative app stores. Just that it's actually a lot of work to put together something that's going to look interesting enough that non-techy people will click through those dire warning in Android, to use your app store.

Never underestimate the inertia of the vast bulk of device users, who only ever install a handful of apps. We'd all love there to be a way of doing things without lining Google's pockets - but even if someone sets up an app store with terms that you like, you have to persuade ordinary people to use it. It's not just a case of "build it, and they will come"
 
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